Why Can’t I Hear my Granddaughter’s Voice But I Can Hear Quiet Sounds?

Hearing loss isn’t exclusively about volume, it’s about pitch. It’s possible you have some amount of high-frequency hearing loss if you can comprehend what the men in the room are saying but you can’t hear children and women. This is a very common kind of hearing loss so you’re not alone.

high-frequency Hearing Loss Symptoms

With high-frequency hearing loss, you may still be able to register the volume of a woman’s voice or a child’s voice, but consonant sounds that make conversations easy to understand, get muddled. Usually the most difficult to differentiate are consonant sounds like ch, th, t, soft s, c, sh, k, f, and h. Even though a woman or a child is not mumbling, it might sound like they are. Losing the ability to distinguish these sounds makes it very difficult to understand a child’s joke or your sister’s question about dinner plans. Separation from family and friends, sadness, and frustration can be the result.

People who have high-frequency hearing loss also don’t hear other sounds falling within the high-frequency range (2000 Hz and higher). This includes birds chirping, high musical notes, sirens or squeaks. Even at low volumes a man’s voice, thunder, and bass musical notes, might be fairly easy to detect.

Reasons For High-Frequency Hearing Loss

As the most common type of hearing loss, high-frequency hearing loss can creep up on people as they age, frequently imperceptibly at first. high-frequency hearing loss can be triggered by other things besides aging like certain medical disorders like cardiovascular disease, too much noise exposure, and several medications.

These situations all do damage to the tiny, hair-like sensory cells within the cochlea. Sound input is received by these little cells and delivered to the brain for processing. The higher pitched sounds are often the first to become tough to understand because the high-frequency cells become injured more easily than the lower pitched cells.

How to Avoid High-Frequency Hearing Loss

Even though you can’t stop your ears from aging, there are quite a few steps you can take to stop or at least slow the progression of high-frequency hearing loss. Including these:

Ask your doctor about medications you use. At least 200 different varieties of medications can cause or worsen high-frequency hearing loss. Even too much aspirin can harm your hearing. To find out if there are options less likely to injure your hearing, consult your doctor. If you can’t avoid taking a particular medication, keep in close contact with your hearing professional for regular hearing loss and balance testing. Dealing with hearing loss early can help avoid further loss.

Quieter things are better. Find the quietest product by checking the noise rating of the appliances. And don’t be afraid to ask the restaurant manager to turn the music down if it’s hard to hear your dinner companions.

Never utilizing a swab (or other small objects) to get rid of ear wax. Your capacity to hear becomes blunted when you jam old earwax against your eardrum. Gently clean out excess earwax with a cloth after you shower, or ask your hearing professional about other ear irrigation techniques for eliminating earwax without damaging your hearing.

Your health is important so take care of it. Smoking can harm your hearing. Poor health, poor nutrition, or lack of exercise can also hurt your hearing. Preserve your hearing by taking care of your overall health.

Using hearing protection in noisy spaces.A certain sign that your ears might be getting damaged is if you need to yell to be heard in a noisy location. Heavy traffic, engines revving, power tool sounds, the loud stereo systems at movie theaters or live music concerts are all good examples of times when popping in the ear-plugs is a smart idea. Noise canceling earphone may not fit inside your pocket, but they can be the best solution in some scenarios.

Treatment For High-Frequency Hearing Loss

Currently, the most reliable strategy for managing high-frequency hearing loss is hearing aids. And since this is the most widespread type of hearing loss, there are many different designs a person can pick from. Hearing aids can boost high-pitched sounds so they are clearer to the listener. You can directly manage your level and degree of hearing loss by having your hearing care pro fine-tune your hearing aid to improve your ability to hear sounds at the correct level. Many hearing aids can be manipulated by your phone and include directional microphones for fine-tuning in circumstances like business meetings, restaurant dinners, talking on the phone or listening to children.

Make an appointment for a hearing test if you suspect you may have high-frequency hearing loss. Chances are, there are individually-customized answers that can increase your ability to hear your grandchild’s precious one-liners.